Media mentions

9 March 2012

Cat scat fever

Toronto Star, 18.2.2011

A parasite that is contracted by touching cat faeces can cause an increase in riskseeking behaviour, according to the Toronto Star. Toxoplasmosis, the disease caused by the parasite, is known to cause mild flu-like symptoms and problems in unborn babies or people with compromised immune systems, but the new finding was revealed after scientists conducted personality tests on infected people. Professor Joanne Webster (Public Health) told the newspaper “A toxo-infected rat looks and acts, in general, happy and healthy and very much like an uninfected rat. However, specific behaviours likely to enhance transmission to the cat definitive host are subtly altered or manipulated. They are more active, less neophobic (fearful of new things) and in particular have the ‘fatal feline attraction’ where they are actually attracted to the feline definitive hosts.”

Science communication goes viral

The Guardian 23.02.12

A film created by four MSc Science Communication students has gone viral on the internet, with over 350,000 views on the video-sharing site YouTube, reported The Guardian. They recreated the hit song Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, using laboratory tools and equipment from the Imperial Blast Laboratory (now part of the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies) and some creative editing techniques. “We did this to communicate science. And it seems to have worked,” wrote Anna Perman (Humanities), one of the students who created the video. http://bit.ly/ scicomsvid

Read the full story here

Bright spark

BBC News 23.2.2012

Royal College of Art graduate Min-Kyu Choi has created and launched a folding three-pin plug, reported BBC News. The prototype plug was first designed and displayed in 2009, after which its designer teamed up with Imperial MBA student Matthew Judkins (Business School), who helped turn the vision into a viable business, and a product that will soon go on sale at London’s Design Museum. The business partners are now thinking of creating an incubator for other young designers. Matthew told the BBC: “There is a void in this country between great design and then commercialisation. But especially of late, there is a great enthusiasm to start new ventures.”

A current discussion

BBC Radio 4, 23.2.2012

Electrical conduction has been studied for several hundred years, some materials conduct electricity and others don’t, as a panel of experts recently discussed on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time. However, only in the last century have scientists known about, and exploited, materials that have the properties of semiconductors, which have different conductivity at different temperatures. “If we could find a room temperature superconductor, a lot of the microelectronic industry and our computers would benefit from zero resistance elements and power could be transmitted without loss of energy,” said Professor Lesley Cohen, who featured on the programme with Professor Jenny Nelson (both Physics). “This would revolutionise aspects of our modern world,” she added.